Three posts in an afternoon! This one warrants more than a Twitter, however.

For over a decade, I have tried to casually learn Japanese whenever the urge hits, I do some vocab, practice some kana, and then fall away when I realize aside from the rare anime or untranslated video game, I have no use for Japanese in my life. But it's still on my Spoiled White Man's Ambition List that I learn another language.

Anyway, I just got a gift card for iTunes for Father's Day, and I've seen an increasing amount of good tutoring applications on the iPhone for learning languages. So I jumped right in last week and grabbed a few apps. They are stunning.

I think this last week alone, whenever I have had fifteen minutes to spare once or twice a day, I've been breaking out the apps. I'm already back to where I was with kana reading, and I'm hoping to expand and retain that. My kanji is bad, but I have apps to help that, too. I've got a dictionary with kana, kanji and romanji lookups. I have flash cards. Games. stroke teaching. speaking apps. Phrase apps. And all of this is being governed by one Head Honcho application that is ushering me through the learning process, so I'm not just jumping all willy-nilly over the board.

I have turned my cell phone into a fully capable electronic tutor. It's a speak-and-spell on steroids.

Anyway, I'm making this a post to talk about it openly, but also to landmark my new foray into learning Japanese. Let's see how far my electronic curriculum will take me. I'm trying to treat it not as a 'do-it-yourself' approach, but rather as a digital classroom. I'm being taught, just by a series of cooperative programs.

Charlie was awesome enough to score me some Japanese children's books. It is my hopes that I'll be able to read them in earnest to my daughter by the time she can understand what I say. I don't know if I'll ever be good enough to teach her a language I'm barely familiar with, and I'm not looking to create a parroting scenario, but if anything, it's a landmark for myself to help understand the language better.

Can I talk to you about going green for a second?

My biggest struggle with living an ecologically balanced lifestyle comes from the fact that the line is impossibly vague. There are some simple things people can do, like recycle and drive less and revitalize wilderness and use consumer products that are more ecologically friendly... these are baby steps to improving your lifestyle and impact on the planet, and I can get behind it. I try when I can, or when I remember. I prefer cloth diapers to disposables, because I feel guilty throwing poop lined in plastic away. But I can't afford to sell my car and buy a new one, or sell my house and move closer to work. I have to drive my commute in my vehicle every day, or I can't continue to live.

So there's a degree of selfishness and self-preservation mixed with standards set by my culture and limitations based on my freedoms, financially and practically. And it gets worse from there, because I know that just by living, I'm hurting the planet more and more. Because there are some raw facts. I just damaged the environment by having a child. Severely. I have created another human who will use an absurd amount of resources over her lifetime, and probably breed more to use more resources. And I can teach her how to live well, but ultimately it's her choice on how she wants to treat this planet. And I doubt it'll net a positive.

I guess it comes down to this. Unless I can see that there's a possibility that a human can not just live neutral but give back a surplus to the environment and ecosystem, the hard truth exists that the only way to really give back to the planet is to not be alive. And since most people will inherently and selfishly choose to go on living, they're not doing all they can to help the environment.

Put your emotions in your back pocket for a second and try not to call me out for being morbid, I'm just trying to cut to the chase.

I'm not saying this is an all or none situation, but it really ads a gravity to the argument. If you really cared about the environment, more than anything else, you would either increase your eco-friendly production to compensate for your entire lifestyle and then some, or you should remove yourself from the equation sooner than later. Otherwise you are always simply diminishing your debts, not eliminating them. If that's the goal, if that's what everyone's trying to do, then fine. But as long as we all understand that we're not doing the most we can do. I know we can't all be Al Gore, but I'm trying to separate the lip service, the hubris, the pride and attitude from the reality. You're wasting less, but you're still wasting. Always wasting.

Eating food. Driving vehicles. Using fuel of any sort. Discarding anything that isn't reclaimed in its entirety. We're horrid little termites, and we're probably better off exterminated, as far as this ecosystem is concerned.

The apex truth is that it's all selfish in the end, because the only reason to save the planet is to prolong its inevitable demise. And when we talk about saving the planet, we're really just talking about saving life and people, since the planet will do just fine as a celestial entity well after we're long gone. Until the sun takes it out. Man, existence is futile.

I'm going to take this from the seven generation standpoint, and do what I can to make life sustainable for my great-great-grandchildren. Beyond that is the concerns of the succeeding generations of people. Here's to hoping I can keep to that vision.

I like asparagus.

Thursday night was rough. Farron got really sick, and I ended up staying up all night watching baby and wife. I crashed after the sun came up, and took a sick day to recoup. Got up around noon, did all the chores I had meant to do the night before, and by 5pm I was caught up to where I needed to be.

Saturday went a little more according to plan. Karate fell through, but instead the Insane Chore Posse descended on the Grzesiak garage and had a field day. We got the whole thing cleaned out and reorganized, garbage was disposed of, messes were cleaned and we left with a satisfied Joe and a garage with enough room to hold a car. We had pulled pork sandwiches and beer as a reward. I think this chore team was the best idea to come out of this summer.

The rest of Saturday turned into a family day, we rented The Sky Crawlers from Redbox, which was a pretty good anime, very slow paced, but a good story and gorgeous animation. Jason and Charlie came by for more Galaxy Trucker. I'm still on the learning curve, but it's a fun enough game I don't care if I'm in last place. I still have never gone derelict, so I'm doing something right.

Sunday was Father's Day, and I got a very wonderful present from my daughter and wife. A new office plant with a pot painted by my little girl. Best present ever.

Lastly, I did it. I cancelled City of Heroes, just shy of my 60th month of play. It's not really all that significant except I thought I'd never cancel the game until it was buried by something far superior. Truth is, I'm just not playing it enough to justify the cost. I'll reactivate it when the new expansion comes out. Otherwise, I'll just keep playing Free Realms during the few rare windows I get to play games these days.

Also, because it's not actually all about me, congratulations to EP and Laura! Way to breed!

Listen up, y'all. ICP is in the house. Hell, could be your house.

Joe and I came up with a great idea for a chore mob. The details are posted over at his journal. You wanna get drafted? You tuff to roll with the ICP? We get stuff done. And you get out what you put in. Howz about it?

So, looks like we're cashing in on a bit of good karma lately.

Uncle Bruce and Josh finally finished the fascia that I've been putting off, however instead of just tacking up some home depot prefab wood grain junk I bought, they actually crimped their own fascia to match what's already on the house. So I got a professional job for basically free. I let Bruce take all of the excess materials, including the other stuff I bought, knowing he'll put it to use somewhere. They also cut the tree by the house that was getting caught on the power line. This house is getting better step by step.

On a down note, Josh and Jenny are moving out to live with Jenny's parents. Roommates come and go, I know this, but Farron really liked living with family. She cried, then Jenny cried, there was crying. But the silver lining is that Farron's sister's lease is up in August when they move out, and she and her boyfriend want to move in. Jake is a really cool guy, and we get along great. Now it's just a matter of what Farron's dad has to say about it, since he's basically funding Mary Beth while she goes to school anyways. It'd be cheaper to live with us than in an apartment for sure, so I think this is going to work all around.

Also, if you didn't hear about me trying and failing to sell my bike because the title transfer never went through because the VIN on the lien release was incorrect, this is finally moving forward again. I got a new lien release in the mail yesterday. I haven't confirmed the VIN yet, but it means that HSBC isn't this horrible customer service void I feared they might be, and I actually got assisted despite not being the current legal owner of the bike. Now to make photocopies of everything in triplicate before mailing things off again, and I might get the title transferred in time to sell this bike during the summertime.

Back to Jake, it's weird talking about video games with an adult who's almost a decade younger than me. I have to refer to Super Nintendo as 'retro gaming', and recognize that franchises I've been invested in like Final Fantasy, Metroid and Mega Man have been around since before he was born. It makes discussions interesting. Instead of making me feel old, it makes me feel proud that video games are pretty established in modern cultural history now.

Between the fascia and fixing up the bike, I owe Uncle Bruce a lot. Let's hope I can pay this one forward, he could use the karma more than us.

I still read LJ all the time, and I still comment everywhere, but I generally forget to update my own page. I think I censor myself too much, since everything in my life these days is either fairly personal (parenting) or complete drivel (gaming). But I think I have some stuff to talk about. I... I got words.

It's great having Laura in town. It brings out a special shiny extroversion in my wife. She's also great with babies. They all watched Slumdog Millionaire last night, but I stayed in my office to draw and watch episodes of ALF. It was not a waste of an evening.

I can't believe I'm still playing Free Realms. I showed the game to Laura (different Laura now, keep up with me) and she of course flipped over it because the game was clearly made just for her. I wasn't interested in playing it because it looked like WoW dumbed down and kiddied up, with a bunch of fluff added. Well, it's the fluff that got me. Turns out what this game lacks in depth, it makes up for in a breadth of things to do. I'm not gonna go into it for fear of turning this post into an advertisement, but it's free to play, so just go check it out yourself sometime.

Never did get around to playing Kimleng's copy of inFAMOUS. Man. I avoided a beautiful PS3 game where you play a godlike superhero to smelt iron in a colorful minigame. What happened.

I have a giant pile of wood by my firepit that needs to be burned. I'm also looking to move the firepit closer into the yard by about 8 feet, and digging it down just a little to allow for more room. It's a prominent feature of the backyard.

Ben and Rachael's wedding reception was nice. I was glad to be invited. Ran into some old friends, Ben included. It was nostalgic, but also fresh. I suppose that's typical for those kinds of events.

I love being a comic artist and making things on the internet and computers. But I have a distinct lack of crafts that let me make something physical these days. I whittle, but I haven't made anything substantial in the last couple years except for a cat I carved a little while back. I think I want to do carvings and some leatherwork. I'm thinking on it. first I want to patch up the screen porch so I have a bug-free haven to work outside.

This was going to be a recount of my weekend, but it turned into a brain dump. You've been warned.

For Mother's Day, I watched Bossany while Farron went out with her mom and sister to have lunch and see Star Trek. I had a good, uninterrupted six something hours with my baby, which I'm sheepish to admit is the longest time alone I've spent with her so far. But I feel like I finally bonded with her.

( Side subject: And now I think I know now what other parents are talking about. )

Anyway, back to the facts. Bossany laughed for me yesterday. A genuine chuckle. And then again later. It is now time for my "Silly Dad" qualities to really shine.

Over breakfast at Ember's, I asked my father-in-law what he thought of having daughters. He said he thought it was loads easier than having boys. Girls, he explained, have their enigmas, and are complex. But boys will just burn down your house. And while his simplicity was all about humor, he and I then went on to recount all the times we had nearly burned down our own houses, or blown off our hands with fireworks, or built homemade catapults and loaded not marshmallows but steel ball bearings (as we exclaimed in unison, to my wife's horror). I think it was educational for Farron, too. I don't think she knew either of us had done such things. Jeff's stories topped mine, involving liquor and motorcycles and a stupid friend and grevious bodily harm, but I omitted some of my worse stories. Farron was getting enough scoop for one day.

Here's a shiny for people who made it this far: Proof Roombas rule

Parents commonly worry about what if their kids smoke pot. I need to remember to tell them that if they spill gas all over the garage, don't light it to burn it away so I don't find out about it.

Hey everyone, Aric and I are going to have a Blank It Anniversary/100th Comic Meet and Greet one month from today on Thursday, May 21st, at the Minneapolis Uptown Tea Garden from 7 to 9pm.

I don't expect it to be big, or else I wouldn't have it at the tea bar. But I did want it to be at a public place so friends and possibly fans could also meet up. Anyways, it's no red-rope event, it's just a celebration over some tea. Stop on by and raise a glass.

P.S. - I know the LJ feed is broken, I have a support ticket into LJ to get it fixed. In the meantime, you could, y'know, actually go to the site.

The internet probably deserves a short update, since the last couple weeks have been busy.

Flew to Phoenix last week with Farron and baby to go visit my folks. It was a great time. Sunny, breezy and 80 degrees. We enjoyed a few walks and some long country drives, but wow, did we not act touristy. We mostly cooked homemade meals and stayed in Fountain Hills, but it was still a great time.

Easter was fun, Bossany stole the show. The food was fantastic, the games were good, I ate too much candy and ham croissant sandwiches.

Squeaked in a little City of Heroes, the new Mission Architect system has pretty much up-ended the gameplay for now, most people are making or testing missions. I don't mind helping out friends, but come on. If you want feedback, publish your mission first so I at least get XP for running through a 4-mission arc. Still, I got a few levels and caught up with some old in-game friends. Not too shabby.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, but not in that 'everything is crazy' way, more of that 'booked into the foreseeable future' way. Which really, is just until Thursday. It just seems like forever. I think it's because the baby has invented a new cry that sheers paint off walls and shatters glass windows. She might as well be screaming "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" with the tone. It rattles the soul. The silver lining is that when she's done fussing, she generally goes back to wide smiles and ecstatic kicking.

Farron's with her aunt today doing a dry run of a day-care day for when she goes back to work next week. I hope it's all going well.

So, I can't say I've never been a patriot, but I also can't say I have been. I mean, I like America, it is the bosom of which my undeniably awesome life has been allowed to grow and flourish in. So by that simple fact, I'm pretty cool with this country. I'm not very happy with everything that's gone on, the economy, foreign policy, the bickering in Washington... but if I start from the ground up, I can say that I enjoy my neighborhood, I enjoy my city. I enjoy my state, I enjoy traveling cross-country, and I have pretty much enjoyed everywhere I've toured in America, from NYC to southern California, Phoenix, Orlando, the mountains of Montana, the green valleys of Tennessee, the Black Hills, the Rockies, Yellowstone, all of it. It's all pretty good, from a microanalytical perspective.

I think the reason I reject Patriotism isn't that I don't love America, it's that I don't think it's better than the rest of the world. Europe is pretty frickin' awesome. Canada is cool. Japan is wild. I want to travel more and see these places.

So I mean, it's easy to root for a hometown sports team because everywhere has one, and they all compete in good fun, and it's expected of you to support your team, even by your rivals. Sometimes people can go overboard, but for the most part, it's fun to pick a side and root. But when it comes to countries, to pick your side and root is to put down other cultures, to embrace prejudism and racism and let's be honest; when countries start bickering over which is better, that's how conflicts begin.

I kinda want to change that. I mean, as one person I can't really, but with America being in this whole turning point I wonder if I can start to be proud of America without the implication that it's better, or the best, it's just my home team and I support them. I want America's economy to recover, their foreign relations to be mended, and I want this country to prosper. Waving a flag doesn't exactly help this, tangibly, but it could be an honest reminder that this country still has promise and I believe it can be a fair player in the global scene.

I said that if Obama won, I'd fly an American flag in my backyard. I think that was originally a gut reaction towards a liberal change in power. But now I think I'm actually going to do it, mostly because I want to help rebuild America's image. I want to bring back optimism and pride, without hubris or ego, and show that while America and its people aren't perfect, we're working to make it better.

Sitting here with an un-colored comic, realizing I should dump my brain before trying to continue.

I pretty much missed out on the whole geekend, which blew. Saturday was one of those days where the day itself felt like a bad dream, where time is going twice as fast and everything you do is in exact contradiction of what you want to be doing. Farron lost her wallet after we went shopping. On our way to go back and find it, we got lost in Mendota and I got pulled over for whipping around a turn. Citations galore, turns out my tabs are expired. By the time I get Farron home, still sans wallet, it was after six and I was throwing a pity party. By the time I had my head straight, it was late and I was then genuinely exhausted.

Sunday, however, turned it all around. An awesome guy found Farron's wallet and tracked me down on Facebook. We picked up the wallet, went to Olive Garden with our roommates. Farron's dad and grandparents came over and spent time with the baby. I drew my comic super early, and have spent from then until now making new City of Heroes guys and enjoying a relaxing night.

And I realized, Saturday, while lost, wasn't a big deal. We still stopped by Chad's long enough to let folks have some baby time, and get to talk to everyone. And the citation, while sucking, is offset by some magical money I got on Friday, so, oh well, easy come go easy. It sucks that I missed EP, though.

I'll make another post about it later, but everyone's welcome to come by my house on Friday after 6pm for some vernal equinox grilling and fire-making, pending the weather holds out. If it rains out, we'll just set up some boardgames and watch movies indoors.

I was reminiscing with Matt about the planetarium, and if there's still one around to go to. I know the downtown planetarium was torn down with the library, but I didn't know if there were other alternatives. And then I discovered there's a fundraiser going to get a new one built.

Consider donating here for a new planetarium. Because science is cool. Because the next generation deserves more educational exposure to these things than we did, not less. Because you can totally make out under the stars there.

I'm not affiliated. I just found it on Google.

So, my last rat, Puppy, died today at the ripe old age of 3 years, 1 month. No more rats. I wanted to write a nice eulogy and give them a proper send off, but apparently I don't have any pictures of the rats on this computer. I'll upload them when I track them down.

Anyways, I love rats, and I look forward to having more someday, in a more limited number, when I'll have more time to give them attention.

I still have mice, though. Healthy, stinky mice. What the hell.

Another thing, not to pad his ego too much, but credit where credit is due. Matt is becoming a very accomplished martial artist. And as even my sensei and we were talking about yesterday, people outside the dojo never really know or grasp just how much there is to martial arts, let alone how much you know and have studied, because it never leaves the dojo. So I just thought I'd put it out there. Matt's been busting his rump and really has immersed himself into Isshin-Ryu, and is becoming one of the more capable martial artists I know. So hey, a round of applause for Matt.

On that note, between baby and such, I've let my own martial arts study stagnate. Matt's working on the next kata while I struggle to keep the last one I learned down. So in effort to not fall too far behind, I'm starting to force myself to practice at home more. Just in time for the nice weather, which is good. We have three weeks to train before Sensei comes back from his trip to Japan, brimming with knowledge. And we need to be ready to receive it.

I kicked a gorgeous husky in the jaw today. I feel kinda bad for it, since it's more the owner's fault than anybody else's.

I was standing in my backyard with Reggie (my miniature schnauzer for those not in the know) on a leash talking to my neighbor over the fence while Reggie finds a place to pee. We hear some dogs scrapping a few houses down, and we see a husky run out into the field by the tracks. We then see its owner walking along said tracks. We make a passing comment about how there's a lot of dogs in the neighborhood, one too many off leashes to make me comfortable. As we resume our discussion about other things, the husky now decides to check out the woods behind my house. Reggie begins to growl. The husky decides to come up into my yard and antagonize my dog, who is now beginning to freak out.

I don't know if the husky just wanted to play, or if he was going to let my dog make the first move, but just about when he wanted to get nose to nose, I put the toe of my foot right under the husky's jaw in a pretty traditional front kick. It kinda came out of nowhere for the both of us, because the husky was stunned. He considered trying again, but when I lifted my foot off the ground a second time, he high-tailed it back to his owner, who was now passed beyond my house.

This poor dog's owner probably thinks the dog has freedom, but what he really has is lawlessness. And not knowing exactly how a confrontation between my dog and his would have gone, I had to intervene for the safety of Reggie. So while I feel pretty bad for having just kicked someone else's pet, I feel like when put to the test on if I'd defend me and mine, I probably passed.

Was a very pretty dog, though. I'm pretty sure I didn't hurt it.

Just a quick post to let you guys know, I'm doing a new weekly comic over at Massively.com, and it just went live today. It's an MMO video game humor comic, so you're probably only going to get the jokes if you're a gamer. If you're not a gamer, why you pay attention to me at all baffles me anyways.

It's a paid gig, so I'm pretty excited. Comics for fame and fortune, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Check it out here.

I just want to make a quick post about Blockland so I can go back to the work day with a clean brain-slate.

The zombie mod Left 4 Block is great. I never thought I'd be afraid of Lego zombies, but I guess running for your life is running for your life, even in a blocky, simulated world. I'm trying to add at least one building/structure every day to the city, so that in a few weeks the place will be pretty built out. In addition to contributions from friends (my roommate especially), we should have a sizable city in no time. The city is built on elevated platforms, so that we can add an underground sewer system later if we want. I'll post screenshots once it starts looking impressive.

I'm getting excited about legos in general, I think I want to go through my old collection, wash them and throw away the broken ones. I know Boz can't play with legos for another 5-6 years, but when she's ready, she'll have all of mine and Farron's legos, and hopefully that'll be impressive. I'm half-tempted to completely spoil her and start garage sale hunting for legos now, just to make the collection absurd by the time she's old enough to enjoy them.

In the meantime, I'll just... make sure they work.

Parenting is getting a little bit tougher. By the time I get home from work, Bossany is usually waking up from her afternoon nap, and becomes wide awake and alert. This is a great time to spend time with her and play and do "tummy time" and watch her hold her head up and show her silly things and see what she digests. But it's also the time of crying, projectile pooping and spitting up. Life is lived in little punctuated windows between taking care of her. I try to give Farron a break from the parenting for a bit, but I'm also starting to learn that there's no such thing as an off-duty mom. The only part about this all that's frustrating is that I can't expect anything from Bossany yet, except for her to act like a baby. I can't reason with her or share experiences with her mutually, I just distract her and care for her. I'm trying not to rush through any of her phases, she's already changed so much in two weeks, but I do look forward to having a more developed little munchkin.

Anyway, I've been scolded for not providing enough pictures to the interweb, so here's a sampling until I finally get around to updating my Flickr.

( Pictures of Bossany )

These last two weeks have been life altering.

I have a new human being in my life that I love. Bossany can't even really interact with me except on very primal levels so far, but still she and I have grown a bond that is unlike any relationship I have with anybody else. She smiles now. I know ways to make her content. I know how to care for her. It's not surreal, it's just new. Every human being alive gets to be a part of this whole parent/child thing in one respect or another, so it's naive to say I have something unique. But I do have something unique, since I have a unique human being. Nobody else except my wife gets to call Bossany their daughter, and nobody in the world except Bossany gets to have me for a father (so far). This is something fantastic I get to cherish.

I lost a friend to disease. A friend I hadn't seen in quite awhile, partially because of the disease. But at the memorial service today I got to share in the stories of her life from loved ones, and it caused memories to come flooding back. She will be missed.

Joe and Elly just had their baby, two weeks after ours, which is about how far apart our labors were, so that's good. So many kids now, I look forward to seeing them all grow up together. I remember growing up with the kids of my parents' friends. Some are still around. One just had a kid of his own. This is all just a part of a cycle, I suppose.

On to more superficial things. After a year of being stashed in the basement, I resurrected my desktop PC, because I miss playing my games with all the graphics turned on high. New harddrive, clean install, games only. I'll keep my laptop for comic work and personal computing. This guy's just for shooting stuff. But hey, one more spare computer in case someone wants to come over and play CoH or TF2.

Tomorrow I'm going back to work after a two week paternity leave. The break was worth it. My new family is established. The household is stabilizing, the nursery is effectively complete. 2009 is going to be one for the books.

I should really be journaling about baby stuff, but it's still kinda hard to parse and digest, let alone distill and share with the internet.

Bossany is doing very well. She only has three modes of operation (nurse, sleep, cry), but there are in-between phases where she tends to make lots of googly faces and grunty noises. She also fills diapers, but it doesn't get its own category as she seems to be able to do it on a whim, during any other given activity.

This week has been the most documented week of my life. There are rolls and memcards full of pictures, hours of video, friends and family around and webcam broadcasts capturing every moment, either to media or memories.

I'm really proud of my animals, Beep and Reggie, for how they dealt with the transition. Reggie seems to care a lot about the baby (he'll whine and alert us if the baby's crying, as if we can't hear her), and he guards the bedroom door and growls if the baby's tucked away inside. Good boy. As for the cat, aside from the time he tried to snuggle (read: sleep on) her, they get along.

Bossany and Amelia have met, and baby Jesse came by to see us in the hospital before the delivery. What with Baby Grzesiak on the way, I'm sure we'll have a sizable diaper brigade going soon enough.

If you want to come by and visit, just give a call. We're here for awhile. I'm not going back to work until next week.

I had a real negative part of this post where I verbally flicked off all the lame parents who told me to brace for hell-in-a-handbasket and tried to scare me, but I'm over it. Those people can go suck a diaper. Parenting rules.

It's hard to update LJ from the hospital since they block the site, so I have to do it from my phone. Anyway, baby Bossany is born and she's doing fine. More details are on my Twitter account (see previous post). Pictures exist out there somewhere, ask around if you're curious, I'll update my own galleries later. Thanks everyone for all your great support, prayers and well wishes! We may not be responding, but we hear them all.

As we enter the 20th hour of labor, I wanted to mention or remind everyone that you can see the play-by-play on my Twitter account.

I keep having revelations about the iPhone and how fantastic it is. Having owned one for over a year now, I thought I'd finally write up a big honkin' post about it, and why if you think you're enjoying the advances of the 21st century you as an average Joe should consider a smart phone.

I'm not an Apple fanboy, if it helps, anytime I say 'iPhone' you can pretend I say 'Google Android' or even 'Blackberry'. But since I'm talking about the iPhone as far as specific applications, run with it.

( Read more... )

Holy shit. Farron's water just broke. I'll uh... update from my iPhone!

Paint color for nursery is picked out, roommate will be painting the room while we're off at work tomorrow. What a swell guy.

We've lost Juniper and Yiddo over the last couple months, and Tate tonight. He'd been on a diet of mostly cream-of-wheat, and wasn't leaving his house. I found him in the same spot he'd been when I fed him earlier. That means we only have one rat left, and that's Puppy (who now gets mostly called Lady so as not to confuse Reggie). While this whole circle of life thing could seem sad, I'm just glad our rats lived to be almost 3 years old, and now they've left us with more room to handle our coming bundle of joy. For all I hope, Puppy will stay with us for many months to come. She's healthy, happy and full of vitality. Now to make sure she doesn't get lonely.

This weekend is double-XP weekend in City of Heroes. If I haven't had a baby yet, I expect to spend a little time grinding my villain and tweaking some heroes. Join me.

I was almost about to post a reply to Matt's post about martial arts and "getting it", but this is far too weighty to bury in someone elses journal. My post deviates, but first, go read Matt's. We're on the same level.

I've been practicing martial arts, karate in particular, since I was twelve years old. And I tell you with as much honesty as I can that I feel everything I've ever learned before practicing with Sensei Holt was a hollow facade of what martial arts are. And I don't think I can stress the gravity of that enough. I don't think, however, I would appreciate his intuit knowledge and that of his senseis without all of my prior experience. Stick with me, I have a wicked analogy. I work best with analogies.

Imagine someone teaching you how to drive a car by telling you things like how to turn the wheel, and what the pedals do, and that if you slam the gas pedal the car goes way fast, and the blinker thing does something but it's mostly vestigial. Seriously, drink that in. That's how people teach karate. Turning the wheel is like doing the katas. It's the motion. Slamming the gas is like sparring, it shows you the blunt, raw force of the art. But things like the blinkers don't make any sense at all, because you haven't learned the real "why" questions. Why hit a blinker if you can just turn with the wheel? Why doesn't the blinker go on automatically?

When I took driving class when I was 16, I was surprised they didn't talk about how the car worked. Explaining the wheel and the pedals really. I mean, of course it comes up. But what do they really talk about? How to drive safely. Follow distances. Four way stops. Merging and changing lanes. Signalling to other drivers. Everything that has to do with navigating your car through your environment, and they give you fundamental rules that if you follow, you will drive your car safely and efficiently. When you're little, you don't understand traffic safety, you just know cars drive on roads and go beep-beep. Same with if you don't know how self defense works. You see guys, they punch and kick, and the better guy gets to walk away. Right?

Karate isn't about punching and blocking. It's not. No seriously, it's really not. It's about defending your body. It's about using your arms and legs and body weight and positioning and musclular focus to make sure that whatever outside threat, be it man or dog or tree branch does not break through your line of defense, does not puncture your core and do harm to your guts. And against man in particular, one of the ways to defend yourself is to eliminate the threat. Martial arts is a playbook, a gameplan and a strategy that in order to use at all, you need to digest it completely, practice it until your unconsious mind and your muscles know it by heart, and let those techniques take over when the opportunity presents itself.

Not to recount the incident a friend of mine went through where he was mugged recently, but I have probably clocked hours running scenarios through my head. And I don't always come out on top, but I analyze why. Because in a scenario like that, all I want to do is protect myself and mitigate the threat. And I wonder if I honestly could. And if I don't think I can, I keep working harder at it.

But to touch on a point that Matt said, you know you're really starting to understand martial arts when you can start cycling through the laws and rules you know, and come up with new understandings about application that are "correct". I'm not saying inventing new techniques, I mean that you get the tools early on to understand the more complex applications, once you take the time to think about them.

In a cliché moment, I hit my head getting into the shower this morning. Really hard. Like, good thing I didn't get a concussion hard. After an hour of recovery, I tried the whole shower thing again, and karate just started pouring through my thoughts. I had dreamt about karate the night before, and was still somewhat bitter that I missed class on Saturday to go into the office (which paid off, but still). The point is, I realized I had a few theories of my own when it comes to how some particulars of how certain strikes work. And I was just on my way to put on some boots and go practice in the snow when I read LJ and realized I needed to put my thoughts down. I've come up with something on my own, following the traditions of my teachings. I plan to research it, and see where what I know matches those who have come before me. In the meantime, I intend to just drill my katas and keep working to learn.

I've watched people try karate and decide it's not for them. I totally understand. It's as thick as math sometimes, paired with the physical hell of athletic training. And if you don't have a vested interest in both of those facets, you're not going to get everything out of it. If anything, I'm just lucky I've got a great class with a teacher who's really shown me what the arts are actually about, and that I have friends to train with. But even if I didn't, I know now I could continue on my own and still get better. And that's fantastic.

Inspired by countless individuals I hear on NPR daily, in my current wave of mortal existentialism, I've decided to start capturing my thoughts in words with a recorder. It's built into my phone and I can pull it out and record any time, so I'm trying to be as candid as possible. I can't really do it at my desk or when I'm in company, but my commutes, dog walks and late nights allow for a lot of time to record.

On a similar vein, I rescued a huge box of cassette tapes from the garage. Some of them may hold recordings of birthday parties or me as a 2-year-old reading Cat in the Hat. I'm hoping to find a few gems. I think I'll parse through them tonight. I also have plenty of video tapes to go through and eventually digitize also, but I think I'll stick to the audio for right now.

I'm not normally one for taking pictures or documenting things in the moment. But I think doing some reflections, summaries or stories are a nice way to capture both the essence and the emotion of the moment. I can't wait to record my daughter.

So, the last couple evenings have been the same routine. Sit through ridiculous traffic, pick up Farron, go to some store to pick up some essentials or paint swatches or office supplies, go home, cook dinner, pop in a DVD and do chores or draw. Maybe touch a video game.

It's not a bad, but the nights just seem so short.

Baby things are good. Expecting any week now.

Video game jibba jabba follows.

I tried out Fusion Fall last night by kinda accident. It was pretty cool. I saw that it had gone live, so I clicked to download the client so it could install and patch in the background while I worked on the comic. Not so. Apparently the game loads content concurrently while you go. You watch an opening cinematic while the character creator loads, you create your character while the tutorial loads, and you download the first zone while you complete the tutorial. That's a nice way to do it.

So, before I know it, I'm level 2 running around shooting things in a simple, cartoony, kid-oriented game. It doesn't try to be complex, or explain itself too much... you're a guy with a gun. Shoot green things. It was a nice little break in my night. I probably won't buy the game, but only because I'm watching my money. An MMO with a $5/mo fee and no purchase cost isn't awful. You could play it for half a year and pay less than most retail games. And there's family plans, too. As a household of people who play MMOs, I highly encourage family discount things like this.

Still haven't downloaded the Valkyrie pack for CoH yet. Again, it's a money thing. Sure the packs are $20 apiece, and you get a month of time with it so it's really only like $5, but we're really watching the spare cash right now. Still, I'd like to get those wings for my guy. I'm kinda riding on the idea that I'll have a kid soon, and won't have serious time to play until late spring anyways.

So, if you haven't heard of the horrible abomination that is Microsoft Songsmith, take a second to stare in horror as you realize that this thing isn't a lampoon but an actual piece of software from the world's largest software development company, and then laugh as you realize that the internet generation won't receive shoveled crap without running it through the wringer.

And that wringer's name is David Lee Roth. Listen as the software tries to match music to the vocals of Runnin' with the Devil.

It's a 21st century work of art.

I'm going to repost neobitch's post verbatum, not just because of the paranoia, but because it's a really good idea I don't know if many of you do.

"If you want to believe everything you hear on the Internet, LJ has just fired 20 out of 28 of its employees. (Source.)

If I were you, and you were feeling a little cynical, I'd download LJarchive from here (direct download link is here) and back everything up, Just In Case(tm).

I have eight years of posts, and backing my journal up just took me less than ten minutes, and was entirely painless."

Edit: I just ran it. It took a whopping 30 seconds to back up 6 years of LJ. Nice program.

I probably won't make it to Chad and Pam's New Year's party tonight. It seems like a bum move, but there's just a lot of factors saying I should stick around the house. One being I'm kinda partied out, not really the party's fault, but just the stress of the holidays is adding up. Two being I don't have tonight's comic done, but this isn't a show-stopper. The real reason, most importantly, is that even if I went to the party, Farron wouldn't. And I spent last New Years without her, I don't want that to be the trend. 2009 for me is going to be the year of the start of my family unit, and that's probably how I should start off the new year. Snuggled on the couch with my wife and baby-to-be, sipping a glass of bubbly, surrounded by my animals. It's not really a bad way to do it.

"I like our party better. The dress code's easier and I know all the steps."

This flick is going to be fantastic.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/

Edit: It was unfair of me to link to the trailer and not also to the original short film for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.filmroster.com/video/9_short_film